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By Rabbi Joshua Kullock,
Comunidad Hebrea de Guadalajara, Mexico

Translated by Inés Baum - Proofreading by Ellen Zindler

One of the most interesting aspects addressed by our parashah – which is none other than the fateful parashah of the golden calf – is precisely the subject of letters. And I’ll explain why.

The text in the Torah tells us that, when Moses came down from the mountain and saw the terrible vision of the people worshiping the calf, he took the tablets and threw them to the ground, thus ending the ongoing party.

The Midrash offers us a somehow slightly different version of the same episode. According to the Midrash, Moses does not break the tablets; Moses drops the tablets. And why would he drop them? Because facing the golden calf, the Midrash recounts that the letters sculpted on the rock began to fly and returned to heaven, and at that moment, the stones became heavy and Moses had no choice but to drop them.

Moral of the story: the stones – symbol of the covenant between God and the people of Israel – can be carried and supported as long as the covenant is fulfilled. If the people do not carry out their part, the covenant becomes heavy and impossible to hold. If we do not commit as a community, the covenant grows into stone, and stone is bound to be broken and torn. And perhaps it is a platitude unnecessary to mention, but when the covenant turns into stone, and the stone is torn, we, as a community, are also torn apart.

Nevertheless, there is always the possibility to make Tikkun; there is always room for repair. And this is what our parashah teaches us, emphasizing the building of the Tabernacle, because the Mishkan operated in our tradition as the channel used to repair the damage of the calf. And pay attention to the detail: the Torah teaches us that, both for the construction of the calf as for the construction of the Mishkan, the people remained united and acted as a whole. Maybe this is meant to teach us that a bad administration and dreadful leadership can dangerously end in idolatrous constructions, and that only when a leader with clear goals in mind appears – as was Moses at the time – it is possible to once again channel the people into repairing and redeeming actions, which would again give us hope for a better future.

Therefore, in contrast to the stone destruction, we have the Mishkan construction. However, our parashah designates Bezalel as the master builder of the work. Have you ever asked yourself what it was that God saw in Bezalel, which made him worthy of being chosen as the main craftsman for such a job? The Torah does not give us any clue, but in the Talmud we read that Bezalel received the honorary appointment because: yada letzaref et haotiot…, “Bezalel was chosen because he knew how to insert the letters by means of which the world was created.”

We could understand the Talmudic text as an indication that Bezalel was a mystic and therefore possessed the necessary knowledge to carry out successfully so transcendental a construction. Just as God creates worlds through the word, Bezalel created the tabernacle with his ability to insert letters accurately and appropriately. And then maybe the letters that escaped from the stone were the letters that Bezalel was able to rearrange in order to channel the repair of the earlier damage.

But there is another way to understand what appears in the Talmud, because the word ot in Hebrew does not only mean “letter” but also “sign”. And therefore, perhaps Bezalel was not chosen because of his mystical knowledge, but rather because he was the paradigm of the man capable of combining signs in his daily life. He was a man who could see reality in a special way, and unlike those who made the calf, he knew that the path to escape from a difficult moment was to follow a different path altogether.

Bezalel, in this context, is the man who, in complex times, confronts new projects. He is the one who, in times of darkness, does not withdraw or gets trapped in fear and fright, but rather goes out there to build a common unity of sense with those around him. And then he not only combines letters and signs, but rather joins all those who want to help and participate, to search for solutions and continue moving forward.

May we, then, in the example offered by Bezalel, be able to work toward a common unity and toward the unity of a common effort. May we confront new projects, and together open spaces enabling us a creative reading of different realities, turning the place in which we now live into a new Mishkan, a new dwelling which finds us united and committed, a new dwelling for God and for all of us.

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Forwarded by Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik, from Kol Shearit Israel Congregation, Panama.
Translated by Inés Baum and proofread by Ellen Zindler, from B’nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica.

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